In the art of using steel cords, adapted to reinforce elastomeric articles, a general trend towards a simpler steel cord construction which can be manufactured in one single twisting step and consisting of fewer and fewer steel filaments has been recognised. Recently, in the art of reinforcing truck tires, there has been a trend toward using non-wrapped layered steel cord construction.
It is known that providing a layered steel cord construction with a wrapping filament that influences the properties and behaviour of steel cord construction, especially the stiffness and the elasticity.
Simply omitting the wrapping filament without amending the properties of the other steel filaments, constituting the steel cord, in order to fill in the demand for non-wrapped constructions can lead to a great many problems of processability. In particular, irregular spacing of the non-wrapped layered steel cord construction has been observed in the elastomeric plies.